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We communicated the same information through multiple channels: weekly emails, Teams, wiki docs, team presentations, and office hours. The rule: if something wa

We communicated the same information through multiple channels: weekly emails, Teams, wiki docs, team presentations, and office hours. The rule: if something was important, people heard it at least 3 times through different mediums. If only this were standard. Last week I received the only notification that a bunch of internal systems were being deleted in two weeks. No scream test, no archiving, just straight deletion. Sucks to be you if you missed the email for any reason.

MBCook 1y ago
No kidding. The amount of things that change in important environments without anyone telling people outside their teams in some organizations can be maddening.
dshacker 1y ago
Even with this, there were many surprised people. I'm still amazed at all of the people that can ignore everything and just open their IDE and code (and maybe never see teams or email)
- pvdebbe 1y ago
  In my previous company it came to me as a surprise to learn from a third party that our office had moved lol.
- sofixa 1y ago
  Alternatively, communications fatigue. How many emails does the average employee get with nonsense that doesn't apply to them? Oh cool, we have a new VP. Oh cool, that department had a charity drive. Oh cool, system I've never heard of is getting replaced by a new one, favourite of this guy I've never heard of. Add in the various spam (be it attacks or just random vendors trying to sell something). At some point, people start to zone out and barely skim, if that, most of their work emails. Same with work chats, which are also more prone to people sharing random memes or photos from their picnic last week or their latest lego set.
  - kmoser 1y ago
    Everybody gets important emails, and it's literally part of their job to filter the wheat from the chaff. One of my benchmarks for someone's competency is their ability to manage information. With a combination of email filters and mental discipline, even the most busy inbox can be manageable. But this is an acquired skill, akin to not getting lost in social media, and some people are far better at it than others.
    - BenjiWiebe 1y ago
      If the same internal sender sends both irrelevant and important messages, it'll be pretty hard or impossible to filter. My #1 method of keeping my inbox clean, is unsubscribing from newsletters.
      - Marsymars 1y ago
        Our HR lady took personal offence when I asked to be unsubscribed from the emails about “deals” that employees have access to from corporate partners. :(
        Vilian 1y ago
        You can set custom rules in thunderbird to deal with specific mails, like tagging it as a "sale" or just deleting it based on regex
        Marsymars 1y ago
        Yeah, I ended up doing that with Outlook. I also set up a rule to auto-delete phishing test emails based on their headers, which annoyed the security team.
      - kmoser 1y ago
        Yes, the last filter is always the human being who has to deal with whatever the computer couldn't automate. But even then, you should be able to skim an email and quickly determine its relevancy, and decide whether you need to take action immediately, can leave it for the future, or can just delete it. Unless you're getting thousands of emails a day, this should be manageable.
- AdamN 1y ago
  If you read all the notifications you'll never do your actual job. People who just open their IDE and code are to be commended in some respects - but it's a balance of course.
xwolfi 1y ago
What we do is we scream the day before, all of us, get replied that we should have read the memo, reply we have real work to do, and the thing gets cancelled last minute, a few times a year, until nobody gives a fuck anymore.
indemnity 1y ago
I feel this. Every month or two, we get notifications along the FINAL WARNING lines, telling us about some critical system about to be deleted, or some new system that needs to be set up Right Now, because it is a Corporate Standard (that was never rolled out properly), and by golly we have had enough of teams ignoring us, the all powerful Board has got its eyes on you now. It's a full time job to keep up with the never-ending churn. We could probably just spend all our engineering effort being compliant and never delivering features :) Company name withheld to preserve my anonymity (100,000+ employees).

MBCook 1y ago

No kidding. The amount of things that change in important environments without anyone telling people outside their teams in some organizations can be maddening.

dshacker 1y ago

Even with this, there were many surprised people. I'm still amazed at all of the people that can ignore everything and just open their IDE and code (and maybe never see teams or email)

pvdebbe 1y ago
In my previous company it came to me as a surprise to learn from a third party that our office had moved lol.
sofixa 1y ago
Alternatively, communications fatigue. How many emails does the average employee get with nonsense that doesn't apply to them? Oh cool, we have a new VP. Oh cool, that department had a charity drive. Oh cool, system I've never heard of is getting replaced by a new one, favourite of this guy I've never heard of. Add in the various spam (be it attacks or just random vendors trying to sell something). At some point, people start to zone out and barely skim, if that, most of their work emails. Same with work chats, which are also more prone to people sharing random memes or photos from their picnic last week or their latest lego set.
- kmoser 1y ago
  Everybody gets important emails, and it's literally part of their job to filter the wheat from the chaff. One of my benchmarks for someone's competency is their ability to manage information. With a combination of email filters and mental discipline, even the most busy inbox can be manageable. But this is an acquired skill, akin to not getting lost in social media, and some people are far better at it than others.
  - BenjiWiebe 1y ago
    If the same internal sender sends both irrelevant and important messages, it'll be pretty hard or impossible to filter. My #1 method of keeping my inbox clean, is unsubscribing from newsletters.
    - Marsymars 1y ago
      Our HR lady took personal offence when I asked to be unsubscribed from the emails about “deals” that employees have access to from corporate partners. :(
      - Vilian 1y ago
        You can set custom rules in thunderbird to deal with specific mails, like tagging it as a "sale" or just deleting it based on regex
        Marsymars 1y ago
        Yeah, I ended up doing that with Outlook. I also set up a rule to auto-delete phishing test emails based on their headers, which annoyed the security team.
    - kmoser 1y ago
      Yes, the last filter is always the human being who has to deal with whatever the computer couldn't automate. But even then, you should be able to skim an email and quickly determine its relevancy, and decide whether you need to take action immediately, can leave it for the future, or can just delete it. Unless you're getting thousands of emails a day, this should be manageable.
AdamN 1y ago
If you read all the notifications you'll never do your actual job. People who just open their IDE and code are to be commended in some respects - but it's a balance of course.

xwolfi 1y ago

What we do is we scream the day before, all of us, get replied that we should have read the memo, reply we have real work to do, and the thing gets cancelled last minute, a few times a year, until nobody gives a fuck anymore.

indemnity 1y ago

I feel this. Every month or two, we get notifications along the FINAL WARNING lines, telling us about some critical system about to be deleted, or some new system that needs to be set up Right Now, because it is a Corporate Standard (that was never rolled out properly), and by golly we have had enough of teams ignoring us, the all powerful Board has got its eyes on you now. It's a full time job to keep up with the never-ending churn. We could probably just spend all our engineering effort being compliant and never delivering features :) Company name withheld to preserve my anonymity (100,000+ employees).